A group of national religious leaders and scholars, including Russell D. Moore and Archbishop William E. Lori, will release an open letter calling for religious freedom in light of the finalized Health & Human Services Mandate, July 2, during a 2 p.m. EST press conference.
Leaders will call upon the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services (HHS) to expand conscience protections to cover any organization or individual that has religious or moral objectives to covering, providing or enabling access to the mandated drugs and services. Further, they will ask Congress to take measures to prevent future breaches of religious freedom.
Speakers will include Russell D. Moore, president of the Southern Baptist Conventions Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, Archbishop William E. Lori, chairman of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops Ad Hoc Committee for Religious Liberty, Anne Hendershott, professor of sociology at Franciscan University of Steubenville, Ohio and Yuri Mantilla, chairman of the Justice Initiative of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference.
The press conference will be held in the Zenger Room at the National Press Club, located at 529 14th Street NW, Washington, DC 20045. Afterward, there will be a time of Q&A in response to the letter.
The Southern Baptist Convention is Americas largest non-Catholic denomination with more than 15.8 million members in over 46,000 churches nationwide. The Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission is the SBCs ethics, religious liberty and public policy agency with offices in Nashville, Tenn. and Washington, D.C.
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